Chances
by miikasaa
Summary: Five times Eren Jaeger has the chance to say "I love you," and the one time he finally gets it right.


**Chances**

Five times Eren Jaeger has the chance to say "I love you," and the one time he finally gets it right.

 **A/N:** I find inspiration in the strangest places I swear. I haven't been able to finish anything in the longest time, but as soon as I listened to Gotta Get It Right by Sixx:A.M. I was hit with the desire to do this. I've wanted to do something like this forever, so I'm glad it finally came out.

* * *

I.

The warm summer air made it difficult to breathe, difficult to focus on anything other than the air-conditioned chapel behind him, but Eren refuses to move, refuses to take his eyes off of Mikasa. She stands in front of the lake facing the back of the church, her dress held up in one hand, the water gently running over her lower legs. Armin and a few of the other guests were there as well, but Eren couldn't spare them more than a passing thought.

She wanted a beach wedding, wanted to exchange her vows with the water licking at her heels, with her family and friends marching through sand and letting their kids play in the ocean. She wanted something beautiful on the beach, and she deserved that more than anyone Eren knew.

His own tux was nearly suffocating him in the heat, and he figured they should probably get going, but he found himself crossing the street, weaving through guests, to get to her side.

Mikasa grins when she sees him, her dark hair, much longer now than it had been in their late college days, blows wildly around her face as she turns to face him. Armin, his own slacks rolled to his knees, gestures for Eren to join them in the water, but Eren shakes his head. They're on a schedule, after all.

A few kids run past Eren, heading for the small shops littered next to the lake, nearly making him trip, but Mikasa's electric touch on his elbow keeps him steady. His heart flutters at her touch, simultaneously too much and not enough, before she's walking away to gather her heels from the rocks.

"Hey," she says, bright red lips turned upwards. She's looked so much happier lately, since her childhood days of finding guardians and dealing with wills and distant relatives has ended. Mikasa tries to curl her hair behind her ears, but it only gets swept back into the breeze, and she laughs again.

Eren swallows his sudden urge to retch. "Hey."

"Excited?"

The words dance on the edge of his tongue- the words he's been too scared to think of vocalizing since they first came to him six months ago. Six months ago today, when Mikasa accompanied him to buy his tux, and he realized, watching her shift through ridiculous blue and sequined and furry tuxes, that he loved her.

He ignored her for almost two weeks after he realized that yes, he really did love one of his best friends. She'd tried to call him, tried to visit him at his apartment, but he'd been so caught up in his own stupidity that he couldn't bear to face her. It took a trip to his parent's place and one too many beers at dinner to finally admit his problem to his mom, who told him he was an idiot and should just tell Mikasa. But how could he do that to her, when the date was already set?

"Eren?"

He blinks, and Mikasa is way closer than he remembers, the back of her hand pressed to his forehead. It takes every live nerve Eren has not to jerk away from her touch, but instead to remove her hand and offer a weak smile. "I'm okay. Just a little nervous."

Mikasa smiles, too, and knocks her fist against his shoulder. "Who wouldn't be? I mean, it is-"

"Mikasa," Eren interrupts, his thoughts threaten to spill like a dam over the friendship they'd spent almost twenty years maintaining. He couldn't. He couldn't he could- "I-"

"There you are!" A hand slips into Eren's, fingers interlocking with his, and Mikasa's smile doesn't falter as Eren's new wife stands on her tiptoes to kiss Eren's cheek. It takes far too long for Eren to turn away from Mikasa to face his wife, but neither woman notices. "Ready to go? The car's waiting."

Eren looks back at Mikasa, and then at Armin, standing by the path back to the church with an uneasy expression, and to his parents, leaning against each other in the fading sunlight, before nodding slowly.

"Yeah," Eren says, dropping his eyes from Mikasa's face. Like lifting cement, Eren allows his bride to lead him away from their friends and family, to the car waiting to take them to the airport.

* * *

II.

"We bought way too much food." Mikasa shuts the backdoor of his truck, her laughter ringing in his ears as she climbs into the front seat next to Eren. Eren only shrugs, sparing a glance at the food in his backseat as he backs out of the parking space. Mikasa's messing with the radio as Eren pulls into traffic, trying to find a station without commercials.

Eren waves away her concern, rolling down their windows and letting his arm hang out in the wind. "It's a barbeque," he says, "You're supposed to have a ridiculous amount of food. Besides, we got everything on my mom's list-"

"Plus enough brownies to feed an army."

"Hey," Eren points an accusatory finger in her direction. "Those were your idea."

Mikasa snorts, settling in her seat, her short hair ruffling in the breeze. "Not this many!"

Eren rolls his eyes, reaching for the volume on the radio to turn it up instead of responding. His mom wouldn't mind a few extra things. If either of their parents had really been worried about staying under a budget, would Eren's mom have given him her card?

Mikasa suddenly unbuckles her seatbelt, ignoring Eren's curious look as she sheds her cardigan and hooks her arms out the window to grip the top of the trunk.

"Hell no," Eren laughs, reaching for her leg, but she shakes him off. "We're still on the highway!"

"We'll be on the back roads soon enough," she says, sitting on the car door. Eren can't quite see her from this angle, and between watching the road and maneuvering to their exit, he doesn't have the chance to try and make sure she's at least holding on to the rails on the roof of the trunk.

Eren settles for turning the radio back down in case he needed to hear her. "You're paying for the ticket." He gets a thumb up as a response.

He exits the highway, and when the trees become more plentiful and the speed limit drops, Eren tugs lightly on Mikasa's foot, calling for her to come back down. She does, huffing a little bit, and he promises her they'll stargaze in the bed of his truck after the barbeque was over.

"Hey," Eren says after a while, when Mikasa's curled into her seat with her feet propped on the dashboard. She rolls her head back to face him, and though he's still focused on the road, he can feel the heat of her gaze on his cheek. It was the perfect chance to tell her how he felt, how he's felt since fucking middle school. Eren reaches over to take her near hand, linking their fingers together. "There's something I want to tell you."

Mikasa nods, squeezing his hand in encouragement. Her eyes were shining, leftover laughter sparkling in the dark color, and he really wanted their hugs to mean more, wanted the kisses he pressed to her forehead to have a deeper meaning. "Shoot."

Eren stops at the stoplight, taking a deep breath and willing the knots in his stomach to unravel. "So, I've been thinking-"

A sudden series of honks cuts off what he was saying, and Eren turns in time to see a car cross the intersection and run the red light, swerve into the middle of the road, and to a symphony of even more honks, it slams against the front of Eren's truck.

His truck lurches backwards, Mikasa's side taking the most of the crash, but still Eren lurches forward, his hand ripped away from Mikasa's, his head slamming against his steering wheel. The airbags activate, shoving him back against his seat.

There's screaming from every direction, car horns blaring in Eren's ears, but the silence of the truck rang loudest of all. Someone was calling the paramedics, someone was trying to get the door open, someone was yelling at whomever had hit Eren, but someone else wasn't speaking at all.

"Mikasa," Eren coughs, registering glass in his palms and a cracked windshield through his blurred vision. There was no response. "Mikasa!"

He reaches for his seatbelt, but it doesn't come undone, his blood slicking the area and the glass embedding itself deeper in his palm finally gets him to stop trying. Looking up, he can barely make out Mikasa lying flat against her seat, her head lolled away from him, and blood streaming onto her clothes.

"No!" Eren's screaming, sobbing, and cursing in one, trying to reach for her, but he finds the pain in his arm to be too much to even _move_. "No, Mikasa! Someone! Someone help, please! She's-!"

Mikasa's door was wrenched open; two women Eren didn't know were trying to clear enough room to get to Mikasa. His own door was opened, hands grasping at his shirt and a steady voice asking if he could move, but Eren couldn't answer. He struggles against the people trying to help him from the truck, grasping through glass and torn upholstery- he needed to get to Mikasa-!

"Sir!" Someone's asking him, cutting his seatbelt, trying to get him out. "Sir, can you speak?"

" _Mikasa!_ "

Whoever's got Eren had apparently had enough of his reluctance to go, as an arm's wrapped around Eren's waist, and he's hoisted out of the truck and toward the ambulance waiting close by.

From across the truck, Eren can hear the paramedics speaking. The other driver had been killed on impact, had been drunk at two-thirty in the goddam afternoon, didn't have a license, had a record, and had ruined so many lives. One of the paramedics speaks, and the words force Eren limp in the ambulance, for over the sounds of sirens and crying and the monitor they hook him up to, Eren hears one very important thing:

"There's no pulse."

* * *

III.

The attack had been swift, taking everyone in the group off guard.

It was always risky for Eren to venture outside of the city, to leave the confines of the Director's swanky building, but Mikasa had been training for years, Levi had gone with them, and Director Erwin had ordered three extra officers to tag along.

Eren had been involved in a lot of bad shit, starting from his middle school years, when he'd accidentally been discovered by a few of his father's old colleagues. But where Eren's dad specialized in vaccines and flu remedies, these men had secretly practiced human experimentation.

Eren had been held in a hospital a few states away, had been found after only a year by his dad and Erwin Smith, who headed a company that was hell bent on eliminating every "doctor" in that hospital. He'd stayed with Erwin after that, so his father could keep up appearances in his hospital.

Only a few people knew what really happened to Eren, what really happened in that hospital, and according to city records, Eren had died on an operating table there five years ago.

That didn't stop the rumors.

Eren heard the whispers whenever he left Erwin's place, his hood over his head and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. The first few times, Eren had brought earphones, brought Levi or Mikasa to be there as a buffer to the insults, but it's been almost five years since he was freed, he could handle it on his own.

They said there was a monster. A monster kid, who'd been turned into more of a beast than a boy by the doctors down south, who's strength had been amplified ten times that of a normal human. They said he was disfigured, that the experimentation had ruined his blood and Smith was keeping him like an animal, that preparations were being made to have him privately executed, along with the other kids still being held in that infamous hospital.

Eren could have laughed if a few of the rumors didn't ring almost true. His strength had been supplemented- the day he came home to the city he could barely turn a doorknob without denting it- and there was talk among Smith's men that he couldn't have children due to the uncertainty of his blood.

Oh, and when he lost his cool, his eyes glowed yellow instead of their usual green. As if he needed a physical feature to as proof of what he'd become.

Armin and Mikasa, his best friends, had gone through special screening processes after learning he'd returned to the city, and were now living with him in Erwin's building. They'd spent the last few years, along with Eren's dad, trying to convince him he wasn't a monster. But what else could he call himself- when his eyes glowed and he could punch his way through solid concrete?

Eren couldn't count the number of times he'd fallen asleep in Mikasa's bed, his cool tears and the soft pads of her fingers the only things that felt real to him as he relived the cold stings of syringes and the breaking of his fingers, one after the other, that seemed to last forever. Mikasa was always there when he woke up, her smile comforting, and her voice full of a promise to make sure he never endured anything horrific again.

He'd believed her, and even now, as he was bleeding out on a stretcher, he still believed in the finality of her tone, in the hardness of her eyes as she'd promised him a normal life. Even if it meant hiding and staying in Erwin's building forever.

Eren had wanted to see the sunset over the beach. He'd seen it once as a kid, his tiny hands balled between his parent's, and it had taken him months to get the approval from his dad and Smith, but he'd gotten it, and Mikasa was allowed to come along. It was supposed to be the night he admitted he couldn't live without her constant presence at his side- that he loved her.

But a blitz attack on the shore of the beach had changed everything. A small group of men, who believed that the children saved from the hospital shouldn't have the chance to live- that they were monsters and not kids- had surprised Eren's team not long after they arrived at the beach. Armed with knives and crude spears, they attacked. Levi and Mikasa put them down quickly with their guns and superior fighting skills, but not before one of them slashed Eren's back, leaving the knife embedded in his skin and forcing Eren to fall onto it.

"Eren!" Mikasa was screaming, and they weren't on that beach still, they were in his dad's hospital, sprinting to the operating room, but he was still stuck in that moment, standing knee deep in the water with Mikasa by his side. He'd been so close. It could have been perfect, he could have-

"Mik-as…a-"

"Don't speak." She's hovering over him, and he can't tell if she's running alongside or if she's sitting on the gurney next to him. God, he hurt all over. His vision was bleeding red, his breathing had become sporadic, and he feels wetness on his cheeks, different from the cold stickiness of his own blood.

"Mikasa." Eren tries again, his voice even weaker than before. "I-"

"Ackerman, get out! We need to operate now!" Everyone was shouting now, about blood pressure and blood loss and what they needed to get him, and whether or not the normal amount of sedatives would be enough for Eren.

Eren thinks he sees his dad washing his hands through the glass. But he also thinks he sees his mom, and she's been dead for over ten years.

"Eren." There's hands cupping his face, and he can just make out Mikasa's face through the haze. "I'll be right outside. You're going to get through this."

"Mikasa, I-" Someone takes her arm, leading her from the room, and through the hot wave of panic that threatens to engulf him, Eren fears he'll never get the chance to tell her. "Mikasa! I love y-" A surgeon slips a mask over Eren's face, cutting him off, and the sound of his father's orders is the last thing he registers before his vision blacks out for the last time.

* * *

IV.

Eren throws his pencil across the room, reveling only a little in the way it breaks against the wall. From beside him, Mikasa snorts, her nose buried in his history book and her legs propped in his lap. Finals were in a week, and Mikasa had persuaded Eren to begin studying two weeks earlier than he usually did through ice cream and the promise to answer his snapchats in class.

Which is how they found themselves in Eren's basement, a semester's worth of homework and notes spread on the floor before them. He'd been working through his old calculus notes when he'd gotten overwhelmed with his boredom; symbols and equations making his brain feel like mush. It was a little easier for Mikasa, whose only real competition for valedictorian was Armin, and her study habits had been top class since they were freshmen.

"Giving up already, Eren?" Mikasa asks, meeting his gaze from over his book.

Eren leans back until his head rested against the couch behind them. Why they weren't sitting there was beyond him. "Calculus can kiss my ass."

Her nose scrunches. "You'd probably get a paper cut on your ass."

"No faith." He tries to sound indignant, but her giggles were distracting him.

Mikasa hands him an extra pencil, placing the book down to reach for her physics work. Eren sticks his tongue out at her, but she doesn't notice, and he reluctantly goes back to memorizing equations he definitely won't need when he's a doctor.

A few hours later, after they've eaten the pizza Eren's mom dropped off for them, Eren decides he's done studying for the night. Mikasa was re-writing an old essay, lying on her stomach across from him as Eren sags against the front of the couch, tapping his pencil on his leg.

"You're distracting me," Mikasa murmurs after a few minutes, her attention entirely on her paper.

"Sorry." He drops his pencil, rolling onto his side to reach blindly for his phone. It was almost midnight, and a part of him wanted to suggest they get Armin and take a night trip to the beach, but they had school in the morning, and as much as Mikasa let him get away with a bunch of shit, even she had her limits. Not to say he hadn't spent the last few years testing them, but she was still completely focused on her essays, her hair falling to curtain her face and her feet kicking the air, and he couldn't bring himself to bother her.

Eren coughs, turning away as Mikasa glances at him, her lips turned down in concern, but he shakes his head and opens a game on his phone, playing to the background noise of Mikasa's steady breathing and the constant scratch of her pencil on paper.

"Hey," Eren says, when he finally beats his previous high score. He wanted brownies, and knew the perfect corner store to get some at one in the morning. And honestly, he missed looking at her. "Mikasa."

He rolls over again, and finds Mikasa with her head resting on her folded arms, her breathing even and deep. Her hair was splayed around her head, her lips parted and eyelashes fluttering softly when her breathing hitches and then calms again. Eren tugs her pencil out of her hand, tossing it somewhere behind him as he lays at her side, his face close to hers.

"Mikasa," he whispers. "Are you asleep?"

"No," she groans, kicking lightly at his shin.

Eren's grins, his own fatigue catching up with him, but he still remembers to set an alarm on Mikasa's phone. She hated waking late, almost as much as she hated Eren's morning breath after he ate pizza, and he makes a note to not breathe near her in the morning.

Propping an arm behind his head, Eren smiles fondly. What didn't he know about her? He knew all her favorite foods, had learned how to make them during the past year, and knew her secrets and favorite clothes to wear. Knew that she'd never admit it, but Mikasa preferred sleeping at Eren's house since, with his dog and little sister running around, it was much noisier than the apartment she shared with her cousin.

He brushes the hair away from her face, tracing the curve of her cheekbone with his thumb, and is overwhelmed with the desire to kiss her.

And it isn't a surprise to him; it's something he's thought of doing for months, something he'd even dreamed about- though waking from those dreams had been anything but pleasant.

"Mikasa," Eren says, so quietly he could barely hear himself in the still night. "Mikasa, I think I might love-"

She snores, rolling away from him, and he can't find the courage to mention it again.

* * *

V.

Moonlight shines in her hair, painting the lighter strands a ghostly white to match her skin as Mikasa throws her arms to the sides, twirling slowly in the fog. It had been her idea to visit the pier tonight, when the beach was closed and the fog warning was at the highest it's been in months.

Eren had initially protested, they both had papers due in the next week and he was already in hot water with his parents for sneaking out to see a movie with Mikasa a few nights ago, but one pout of her lips and flutter of her eyelashes had him agreeing. He was so weak when it came to her.

She twirls again, her feet invisible beneath the thick mist. Eren trails behind her, caught up in the way the wind catches her hair, in the way the fog seems to bend around her, to dance with her in her own silent melody. She looks ethereal, bathed in moonlight, her smile never wavering, her fingers curling toward him, inviting him.

He takes her hand, allowing her to use him to spin even faster before she's letting go and running across the pier, shouting for him to follow. The beach is silent; the only noise was the crash of waves and the loud tapping of Mikasa's bare feet. Eren was still holding her shoes, hooked on one finger, and he shakes his head, smiling fondly.

When the clouds pass in front of the moon, he loses sight of her, but it's only for an instant before Mikasa's taking his hand again, interlocking their fingers and dragging his other one to the small of her back. She knocks her forehead against his collarbone, and he swears he feels the press of her lips against his skin, (but he's been imagining a lot of meaningful touches between them lately,) and then she's leading him into another dance. It's messy by nature, with no real rhythm involved, and Eren thinks it couldn't be more perfect.

His thoughts dance on the tip of his tongue, everything he's wanted to say to her for years stays lodged in his throat, waiting for the perfect moment to spill, for the perfect moment to kiss her. Eren doesn't think such a moment exists, or that any romantic gesture he could conceive would come close to being enough for her. She's always been beautiful, always been a favorite presence in Eren's life, what could he give her that was more than she already was?

"Mikasa-" She presses a finger to his lips, silencing him with a smile. He makes a face.

"If you talk," she explains, laughing quietly. "You can't hear the wind."

"You can't hear the wind anyway," Eren whines, the chill of the night starting to creep into his bones. Her hands, where they rest on his shoulders, offer little warmth, and he wonders if he could entice her back home with the promise of tea and movies.

"Come on."

She turns away from him, running into the lighter part of the fog, and Eren follows her, like he always will, deeper into the night. His unspoken words rest heavily on his mind, but anything he has to say pales in comparison to her, and maybe, at the end of it all, Mikasa's known all along.

* * *

VI.

Eren wakes with a jerk, wakes to screaming and crying, to someone shouting orders and a signal for retreat, but he can't move. His body was hot, hotter than he could ever remember it being after a transformation, and try as he might, he couldn't get his legs to move.

The ground beneath him was sticky, though wet with blood or sweat or a titan carcass Eren couldn't tell. It smelled like death, and when he finally opens his eyes, a light cloud of steam was hovering over him. There's another shout for retreat, for a headcount, to find the live bodies, but Eren had only two people on his mind.

He manages to roll over, and it takes much more energy than he'd expected. He spots Armin sitting in a cart, a bandage wrapped around his head, but he looks otherwise unharmed. Mikasa was supposed to stay by his side, act as a shield with Levi while Eren fought in his titan form, but now he couldn't see her, couldn't tell where she'd gone.

Someone Eren doesn't recognize catches his eye and nods to Eren's left, where bodies were still lying from the final battle. It was over; the titans were dead, so why didn't it feel like a victory?

Everyone was safe. Humanity could leave the walls; future generations would grow up only hearing about the titans, never fearing for even a second that the threat of an attack would happen to them.

Life would go on, but for Eren, who was struggling to drag himself across the field, it didn't feel like he had a lifetime left to live.

He only recognizes one body when he closes in on the last of them; Mikasa was lying closest to Eren, closest to the medics, but everyone was overwhelmed with victory and the stench of death, it made sense that a few people would slip through the cracks. But Mikasa- she was never supposed to slip through. She had always been stronger than him, always destined to outlast him; he shouldn't be crawling to her barely moving frame through puddles of blood.

"Mikasa," he manages, choking on the word as his strength finally gives out as he reaches her. His head lands near her shoulder, and he could see that it was dislocated, could see the bone popping out of her shoulder, could see the blood spotting her stomach, the tear in her clothes. He grasps wildly for her hand, his heart breaking at the gasp of pain she lets out when he finds it.

"Eren?"

"Don't speak," he interrupts, cutting himself off with a hacking cough. His legs still wouldn't move, and there was tightness in his chest that he couldn't explain. "I'm sorry, Mikasa. You were supposed to have your life to live-your family."

She tries to turn her head to face him, offering a weak smile. "You were always my family. This life- with you-" Mikasa coughs up blood, her chest heaving dangerously. "It was more than enough."

"I should have given you more," he squeezes her hand, hot tears welling in his eyes. Her breathing becomes even more labored, and despite the desperate shouting echoing from all over, no one manages to get to them. They're two kids, not a shifter and a prodigy, just two kids who got dragged into war far too young. They were just two more casualties, two more names, to mention in the next report.

"I-" Mikasa chokes back a sob, but Eren can't raise his head anymore, can't get any closer to her, can't fucking _help her_. "Never needed anything else."

"I love you," Eren spits, because it's his last chance to ever say it, to ever vocalize what he's known for years, what he promised to keep repressed for the sake of humanity. "I've always been in love with you, Mikasa-"

Hands grasp at the back of his shirt, but he doesn't recognize the voice, barely recognizes the feel of the grass beneath his face, the tiny touch of insects and worms writhing along his body.

"Medics!"

Mikasa's hold on his hand was weak, but he can feel the slightest increase in pressure on his fingers. His vision fades, voices ringing in his head, every dream they had to see the ocean, to live freely in the world that was rightfully theirs, none of it meant anything to them now.

His world narrows to the hands brushing the hair away from his face, to the fingers prodding for a pulse, and the fingers losing their grip on his bloody hand.

 _"I know."_

* * *

 **A/N:** I'm so sorry.


End file.
